Meats Category

The sirloin is just next to the leg, and, in some parts of the country, this roast comes attached to a leg of lamb. This cut makes a tender, if bony, roast, or it can be sliced into sirloin steaks for grilling or broiling

These are cut from the breast and usually trimmed of fat. They're best broiled, barbecued or braised.

These are cubes of meat that are too tough to grill or broil. If cooking slowly in liquid, though, they become wonderfully tender

Landjager is a dried, smoked German sausage that needs no refrigeration. Its name comes from "lang tige," which means "smoked for a long time" and "jäger," which means hunter, and refers (one hopes) to it being a convenient snack for hunters to bring on their excursions. Landjager fills the same niche as the American Slim Jim, but it's chewier and less greasy. Look for thin flat sticks of it in German delis.

These pork sausages look and feel like pepperoni, but they're much sweeter.

This is a highly seasoned smoked beef sausage based on a Pennsylvania Dutch recipe.

Despite its name ("liver cheese" in German), this Bavarian specialty contains neither liver nor cheese. It's a pork, beef, and veal meatloaf with the color and consistency of bologna. Germans like to fry thick slices of it and serve them with potatoes.

This is a spicy Portuguese smoked garlic sausage. You need to cook it before serving it.

Liver is rich in iron and Vitamin A and has an unabashed flavor that nicely complements that of its usual companion, onion. Calf's liver is considered to be the best, but lamb liver and beef liver are almost as good and much less expensive. Liver can be cooked with dry heat, say by grilling or sautéing it, but it becomes very tough if it's cooked beyond medium rare. Since liver has very little fat, you might want to baste it or lard it.

This is a family of pork liver sausages that are creamy enough to spread. One variety is braunschweiger, which is smoked liverwurst.

Longanisa is a Filipino sausage that resembles a chorizo. It's often served for breakfast in the Philippines.

This spicy Greek sausage is made with lamb, pork, and orange rind. Cook it before serving

This is a Danish pork sausage. Cook it before serving.

This North African lamb sausage is seasoned with garlic and hot spices. It's often used in couscous dishes.

At least two kinds of sausages answer to the name mettwurst. People in Cincinnati use the name to describe a kielbasa-like sausage that's made with beef and pork, seasoned with pepper and coriander, and smoked. They like to grill it and serve it on a bun. Elsewhere, mettwurst is soft like liverwurst and ready to eat. It's usually spread on crackers and bread.

This is the Portuguese version of blood sausage.

This is Spain salty version of blood sausage, usually made with onion or rice as a filler.

This exquisite smoked pork sausage is similar to bologna, only it's flavored with garlic and has bits of fat and sometimes pistachios in it. It's a key ingredient in a muffaletta sandwich. Always serve it cold.

After lambs are a year old, their meat is sold as mutton. Mutton is cheaper than lamb, but it's tougher, fattier, and less delicately flavored. It's more popular in Europe than in the United States.

This German ham is cured, smoked, and dried.

This is like bologna, only with bits of stuffed olives embedded in it.

Ostrich looks and tastes like a cross between beef and chicken, and it's relatively low in fat.

Pancetta is the Italian counterpart to our bacon. It's cured, but not smoked, and it's often used to give a subtle salty flavor to pasta sauces. Deli counters often carry cylinders of it, and slice it to order.

These small, plump birds are related to pheasants, and very tasty. Varieties include the chukar, red-legged partridge = French partridge, and grey partridge = English partridge.

This is beef brisket that's been seasoned and dry-cured. It's often served hot on rye bread.

Leave it to the French to come up with this buttery rich delicacy. Goose pâté is pricier and more subtle than duck pâté, and is the best choice if you plan to serve the pâté cold. Duck pâté works best in warm dishes. Some people refuse to eat pâté de foie gras from France because the animals are force-fed to enlarge their livers.

This is a Native American version of beef jerky. It consists of small cakes of meat, fat, and fruit that are dried in the sun.

This is a pork and beef loaf that's liberally seasoned with cracked peppercorns.

This spicy sausage is made with beef and pork. It's hard and chewy, and makes a terrific topping for pizza. You don't need to cook it before eating.

These tend to be pricey, but they're more flavorful than chickens. One pheasant can serve two people. Pheasants are lean, so bard them before roasting.

Louisiana cooks like to add this to bean dishes. It's hard to find outside of Louisiana, but it's fairly easy to make from scratch.

This is cured like a ham, but cut from the hog's shoulder. It's not as tender and lean as a true ham, and it cooks much quicker. It's a good, inexpensive choice if you want chopped ham for soups and casseroles.

Pigeon meat is dark and very tender. Look for it in Asian or gourmet markets. Varieties include the squab, which is a young pigeon that's never flown, the wood pigeon, rock dove, and ring dove.

This German sausage is made with beef and/or pork, onions, oat groats, and bacon. It's often served with potatoes.

Southerners like to use this fatty, bony cut to make barbecued pulled pork. It's also available boneless. This is also a good, economical cut to get if you want to make ground pork, kabobs, or stir-fry strips.

This are slices cut from the arm picnic. They're best if braised slowly.

These ribs are meatier than spareribs, but they're not as meaty as country-style ribs. Allow 2/3 pound per person.

This somewhat fatty, economical roast is sold either bone-in and boneless. If you buy it as a bone-in roast, make sure that the butcher has cracked the backbone between the ribs so it's easy to carve. Country-style ribs are cut from this piece.

These are cut from the Boston butt, and they're a cheap and flavorful alternative to pork chops. They're a bit too tough to fry, but they're wonderful if slowly braised.

This is a thick chop taken from the loin eye which is cut almost in half so that it forms a butterfly pattern when opened on the hinge.

For many cooks, this lean and tender cut makes the best pork roast of all. One drawback is that it includes part of the animal's backbone, which adds flavor but can make the roast hard to slice after cooking. One solution is to ask your butcher either to cut off the bone and tie it back on or to cut through the backbone in several places so that you can easily slice the cooked roast into chops. If the backbone is removed and the ribs are "Frenched" or trimmed of meat, this cut is called a rack of pork. To make a crown roast of pork, get two racks and tie them into a circular crown. Your roast will be moister if the butcher doesn't trim the big slab of fat that usually comes with this cut. The roast will be moister if you cut the fat off after the roast is cooked. Steaks cut from this roast are called pork loin chops or pork rib chops.

Pork chops usually turn out juicier if they're thick and if they're attached to bone. Several different cuts are called pork chops. The most tender and expensive ones are the pork loin chop and the pork rib chop. Next in the tenderness hierarchy are the pork sirloin chop, pork top loin chop, and the pork loin blade chop. Pork arm steaks and pork blade steaks are relatively tough and fatty, but they're very flavorful. They're better if they're braised rather than grilled, broiled, or fried.

These have more meat than spareribs or back ribs, but they aren't as easy to eat with fingers. Allow 1/2 pound per person. They come boneless (pictured) or bone-in.

This is a relatively tough cut of meat, often from the shoulder, that the butcher tenderizes mechanically.

These are cubes that are put on skewers for grilling. Don't confuse cubes for kabobs with pork stew meat, which is too tough to grill.

Pork hearts are a bit smaller than veal hearts. They're best cooked using moist heat, say by braising them or cooking them in a stew.